Fifth US Climate Assessment: We’re Seeing Horrors, And Horrors Yet To Come
The US is experiencing “substantial and increasing” economic and societal costs from climate change today—impacts that are “unequivocally” due to our use of fossil fuels, a wide-ranging new government report reveals. The Fifth National Climate Assessment report, released Tuesday by the US Global Change Research Program and compiled by 13 federal agencies and hundreds of scientists, presents a sweeping look at how climate change is already affecting the US economy, population, and society. It examines regional differences, forecasts what could happen under different emissions scenarios, and suggests policy recommendations to avert disaster. While many of the myriad of statistics—that the US is responsible for 17% of the world’s warming; that Alaska has warmed by 2.3 degrees Celsius since 1970 compared to 1.7 degrees in the rest of the world; that Phoenix saw 31 consecutive days with temperatures over 110 degrees Fahrenheit this summer—authors also stressed that there was still time to act. "All of our future projections are conditional on the emissions scenario,” Kate Marvel, a chapter lead author, said on a press call. “If we don't want the world to warm by 3°C or 4°C, we know what to do.”
(AP, Washington Post $, Grist, Reuters, WSJ $, Inside Climate News, New York Times $, Axios, Wired, Politico, Atlanta Journal-Constitution, The Verge)
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